NEW YORK CITY, November 8—Progressive Labor Party participated in a mass march against the destruction and slaughter in Yemen. Although the protest was small, half the protesters blocked the doors of the Saudi Consulate, risking arrest. Comrades distributed dozens of CHALLENGE, hoping to spread an internationalist outlook.In 3 years of civil war there, the Saudis, together with the U.S., UK, and the UAE, have killed more than 10,000 of our working-class sisters, brothers and children and left more than half the population starving. They have blockaded the port of Hudaydah where relief supplies could enter the country.
Some U.S. politicians have expressed “concern” about the Khashoggi killing and U.S. support for the genocidal war in Yemen, but one thing is clear. The U.S. ruling class is not going to give up the hugely profitable arms deals with Saudi Arabia, nor the role the Saudis play for U.S. imperialism’s power and control of oil in the Middle East.
Stories from protesters
After the protest, I got together with four women friends, originally from Yemen. As usual we talked about our families and cultures and Yemen. I want to share some of their stories with CHALLENGE readers. Many of them talked about how the 2017 Anti-Muslim ban (the racist title of this executive order says it all: “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”) issued by president Donald Trump effectively separated and devastated families.
I have eight sisters and one brother in Yemen. We can’t visit our family there and our brother, who needs to get a job to support our sisters, can’t get a visa to the U.S. because of the ban. They live in a village in Yemen. There are no jobs. The cities are destroyed.
I am an American citizen, born in Yemen. I got married one and a half years ago in Malaysia and returned with my husband to his family in Yemen. After the ban, I quickly returned to the U.S. to apply for a visa for my husband. We only lived together as a married couple for four months and now he can’t come to the U.S. and we have no possibility to have our own home and family.
I have family in Djibouti. It’s expensive to live there; a one-bedroom apartment costs $2000 a month. Yemen refugees there are waiting for years. They’ve sold homes and businesses to survive and now are not able to get enough to eat and are drinking dirty water.  
Comrades, we have to continue this fight. We are one international working class and we must destroy imperialism!

November 9,Newark, NJ—150 protestors and supporters rallied outside of the Federal Building today, demanding the release of Jorge Chajón who has now been detained, for over a year now. At the tender age of thirteen, Jorge made the perilous trek from Guatemala to reunite with his family in New Jersey, accompanied by a caravan of 75 workers, fleeing the capitalist violence,that is all too pervasive in his homeland. For over a decade now this has been Jorge’s new home. Here, he graduated High School, and had it not been for his immigration status at the time, he would’ve attended Rutgers University, he later married, and recently became a father to a baby girl.
Despite sorting out his immigration status, and qualifying for DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals). Jorge’s status as a dreamer was brutally crushed when he was detained by ICE, costing him half a million dollars, and 15 months in detention facing inhumane treatment. Today at our demonstration. many blamed the Trump administration for ongoing fascist policies. Yet criminal separation of children from parents within the borders of the U.S is part and parcel of decades of systematic U.S sponsored oppression in Central America. Rulers here reap even more benefits by dividing immigrant from “citizen.”
The fear of deportation--of even more than the 2.5 millions of Obama’s regime--drives wages lower for “citizens”, too, who are pitted against immigrants for jobs. What Jorge’s experience shows us is that the capitalist bosses can only offer workers nightmares not dreams of a better life. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stands in solidarity with Jorge Chacón’s family but takes a further step into the future. We recognize that fighting for an egalitarian world has to combat policies like Reagan’s genocide in Guatemala of the ‘80’s that planted the seeds of violence Jorge and other workers in Central America fled, and continue to flee today.
The crowd today included members of Unitarian Universalist Faith Action, NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice, Make the Road NJ and members of  PLP. We held a banner displaying 2500 signatures demanding Jorge be released, and reunited with his wife and two young children. Unfortunately our rally resulted in no “justice ( the hearing is postponed to November 20). His previous hearing was scheduled for June 26th, but ICE officials failed to transport him to that hearing as well as to a previous hearing!
 Members of PLP and workers engaged in this fight say Enough to false promises! We vow to continue fighting alongside immigrant workers like Jorge, for a new system free from exploitation, that would ultimately smash the profit system and its deadly borders.

BROOKLYN, November 21—At this year’s Progressive Labor Party College Conference, a PL’er told Kingsborough Community College students and staff that “we lead by taking matters into our own hands” (see college article). This KCC contingent didn’t waste any time jumping back into action as soon as classes began on Monday! And since then we’ve been talking about the possibility of a communist future.
Here KCC students who attended the Conference describe what they did.
All for one, one for all
On Monday morning, a freshman student came to our group and explained her problem. She’s a CUNY Accelerated Study in Associates Program(ASAP) student like me, which means our tuition and books are covered. Because ASAP sends the checks to our home, this student didn’t find it strange when she received one. Then the college told her they had overpaid her for ASAP and placed her on academic hold, preventing her from registering for classes next semester.
I see students like her all the time, shy or unsure of how to stand up for themselves. At Kingsborough, some staff test your patience. They ignore you and only help when they absolutely have to.
First we went to Financial Aid. They tried to make it sound like it was the student’s fault for cashing the check. We asked to work out a payment plan; they said no. The money would have to be immediately repaid. The whole point of ASAP is to help students who don’t have money to pay for college. We struggle to pay for basic expenses. What students who need ASAP have hundreds of dollars lying around for whenever the college makes a mistake? Next we went to the Bursar’s office. We were told there was nothing they could do, and told me to mind my own business.
Standing up is our business
After it was clear we weren’t going anywhere, the staff member took a waiver form and said “ok fine, let’s just do this.” Just like that, they wrote it out for half of the amount owed!  While she still has to pay back half, why did we have to go through all that?
I asked them that, and I demanded to know how many other students this “mistake” had happened to? Will they all be receiving these special waivers? Why are academic holds placed on students, affecting their futures, when it’s the college’s mistake? And why is it our responsibility to account for the college’s money? They had no answer.
I didn’t just stand up because she’s my friend. I did it because this is wrong and more of us need to stand up. We discussed it with friends who read CHALLENGE and went to the conference. This student has to write a short essay as a part of the waiver deal. We talked about turning her short essay into an open letter protesting the college’s “mistakes,” and posting it around campus.
Always bring a crowd
On Thursday, a student’s expensive laptop charger went missing during lab. Her friend said she witnessed who took it, maybe by accident. No one wanted police involved, but the office in charge of the lab completely ignored the students’ request to look into it. We discussed it and eight students and faculty supported the student by walking back to the office and demanding that phone calls be made and the issue followed up. We said we’d return and follow up on the situation next week.
A young Caribbean student new, to communist ideas, and a PLP member had just been reading a CHALLENGE article together and talking about what it means to be a communist on a day to day. We take matters into our own hands - and when we do, we bring a crowd!
Small struggles prepare us for larger battles
None of these struggles will end the war in Yemen, lift the siege of Gaza, end racist administrators or racist police terror. Not today! However if we build a communist movement, brick by brick, and struggle by struggle united we can put an end to these evils.
From small skirmishes for waivers to mass struggles like improving public transportation, we’re training ourselves to become the leadership we need to one day run the entire world.

Wildfires are regularly occurring natural disasters whose effects on workers are worsened by the neglect of capitalism. Throughout the state of California, over one thousand workers are still missing and at least 80 have been found dead in the Camp Fire in Northern California and the Woolsey and Hill fires in Southern California. Over 11,000 homes, including the majority of the town of Paradise, have been destroyed and the fires have not been fully contained.
Under communism, we would organize the working class to plan in advance for and respond collectively to the damage and destruction that ensue from natural disasters. Instead of “everyone for themselves,” our motto would be “mobilize the masses to act together.” Most of all, we would preserve and protect our environment from exploitation for profit, and design scientific policies based on the interconnection between a viable natural environment and human progress.
A Paradise lost
While California boasts to be the richest state in the country, home to tech giants like Google and Facebook and the multimillionaires of Malibu, these blazes lay bare the inherent inequality of capitalism, especially in this state, as many poor workers have been reduced to refugee status in tent cities in Walmart parking lots much like our sisters and brothers of less developed countries. (New York Times 11/18).
Moreover, while the Woolsey fire turned around 100,000 acres into a smoldering hellscape with its fast-moving fire, one neighborhood in its path was saved. It’s a gated community with multimillion-dollar homes of celebrities like musician Kanye West who called on private firefighters to save their $60 million mansion and many of the other houses in their neighborhood (Huffington Post 11/15).
Mainly retired workers on fixed incomes lives in Paradise. Most of them never received evacuation orders; those who did found gridlock as they tried to flee (Los Angeles Times, 11/14). This is the essence of capitalism—leaving workers stranded to die. We see this time and time again around the world—the earthquake in Haiti (2010), the tsunami in the Indian Ocean (2004), hurricanes Katrina (2005), Harvey (2017) and Maria (2017) in the southern U.S. states and Puerto Rico.
For decades, workers had demanded safety
The Woolsey fire started near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) and burned part of this nuclear waste contaminated site that has yet to be cleaned up (NBC News, 11/12). Workers who live near SSFL have been campaigning for decades for the government to clean up the site, not just because of the ongoing exposure to residents, but also because of the danger that a wildfire could pose by spreading hazardous chemicals in its smoke.
In the area surrounding the Camp Fire, workers have been wearing masks when outside to protect themselves. Despite the dangerous air quality, farm workers in Ventura County are forced to continue to work in the fields picking crops. Some farms even forced their workers to speed up the picking to avoid crops being damaged by the fires (LA Magazine, 11/15).
Workers douse fires for $2/day
For the other thousands of workers’ and their communities, these blazes were covered by over 9,000 firefighters including 1,500 incarcerated, mostly Black and Latin workers. These incarcerated firefighters risk their lives to make slave wages of two dollars a day, which only increases to $1 an hour when they are actively fighting fires (New York Times, 11/15). Even with the work experience, they cannot work as firefighters when they are released because of their criminal records.
Bosses don’t prioritize health of workers and earth
According to Cal Fire the causes of these fires have yet to be determined. Many people suspect that they were caused by power company equipment failures, which happened minutes before the start of each blaze. Southern California Edison is already facing a lawsuit stating that their negligence caused the Woolsey fire (Ventura County Star, 11/19). Pacific Gas and Electric also reported issues with two high voltage power lines in the area where the Camp Fire started. (Sacramento Bee, 11/18).
Nevertheless, while it is true that forest fires are a natural phenomenon, and while the California energy corporations might have started these fires, the magnitude and intensities of these fires represent a much larger problem that has been ongoing for generations. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) was created in the late 1800’s with the sole aim of managing timber production and was the first government agency that hired university-educated agronomists and forestry experts as opposed to other government bodies that hired based on patronage. However, after the Great Idaho Fire of 1910, which burned three million acres and killed at least 85 workers, fighting forest fires was added to its mission. Nevertheless, in spite of its best intentions, the proponents of scientific forestry didn’t understand the role of fires as serving an important function in maintaining the health of forests.
For instance, shade-intolerant trees such as ponderosa pines, lodge pole pines, and giant sequoias, require periodic fires to clear areas in which they can regenerate. Once fires were suppressed, these trees were overrun by trees like the highly flammable Douglas firs which turned forests into potential giant tinderboxes. Coupled with the Great Migration west, which resulted in larger communities in forest areas, these government policies led to more people living in areas vulnerable to wildfires. With this movement, insurance companies added pressure on the USFS to continue a bad practice in order to preserve their property.
Over time, the USFS began to take on multiple missions that were often in direct contradiction representing the competing interests of real estate developers, wealthy homeowners, insurance companies, timber interests, environmentalists and aspiring firefighters. As a result, the decline in the USFS’ effectiveness now mirrors the decay in bourgeois political institutions like the U.S. Congress (Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014).
Burn capitalism, build communism
Under capitalism, the ruling class doesn’t care about whether housing is built safely in areas that are prone to fires, floods, hurricanes, or other natural disasters. During times of crisis, the working class unites to help each other evacuate and to help each other rebuild. Under communism, natural disasters would be exactly that—natural. Under the leadership of the working class, we will build infrastructure and maintain natural areas to lessen the damage to neighborhoods and destruction of workers’ lives.